by John Cutter
“I’m nine years old,” she said seriously.
Arndt was visibly annoyed; as with many of their bosses, he didn’t like it when the funny stuff came from inferiors. But he pushed ahead.
“So you come from Gangs, eh?” he asked.
“Yes—I’ve been on the job ten years,” Tina said pointedly, clearly uninterested in pursuing the conversation further.
“Why don’t we head into my office,” Morrison suggested, holding back a laugh. Arndt agreed, and followed him in. Arndt made a face when they went in.
“Have you been drinking in here, Captain?” he asked. Apparently the Ozium hadn’t quite done the trick.
“I don’t drink anymore,” Morrison answered. Which wasn’t entirely untrue—as he liked to say, he didn’t drink any more, nor any less.
“Well, in any event, we need to talk,” Arndt said. “We’ve decided to go public with what we have.”
“That’s good—it’s time,” said Morrison.
“What should we give out, then? Did you check for other possible cases, or talk to the Bureau, or anything of that kind?”
“Of course,” said Morrison. “We’ve done all of that, and we have some video footage. There isn’t anything similar in Westchester, Rockland, Nassau, or Suffolk; but I can give you a summary on the two cases and you can decide what to give out that won’t hurt the case. Remember, though, we need to hold some things back, for when we catch these guys. There’s a lot of crazies out there willing to confess to something like this just to get famous.”
“I’m aware of that, Captain,” Arndt said tersely.
“All right,” said Morrison. “I’ll give you a summary in a few hours.” Whatever he gave Arndt was guaranteed to be front-page material the next day, so he knew he’d have to be careful in hedging his bets. Giving up the fact that they were looking for two suspects, for instance, could be catastrophic to the case.
“Very good,” Arndt said, straightening his tie. “I’ll be looking for that before end-of-day.”
Morrison saw him to the door and walked out to the squad room. Once the door had closed behind Arndt, the room erupted into a ripple of laughter. Medveded threw a notebook toward the door with a gesture of contempt. Even the Coke boys stood in their doorway, smiling to see Arndt gone. Morrison walked up to Tina Koreski.
“Welcome to the squad, Koreski,” he said. “That was a good start.”
“Yeah, I bet. I’ll be in Staten Island tomorrow,” she laughed.
“Maybe once all this is done,” Morrison smiled back. “Now, look. I’m sure you know I pulled you from Gangs for a reason. I’ve actually wanted to get you on the team for a while, but didn’t have an opportunity before these two homicides came along. We’re lucky to have you.”
“Thanks, Captain.”
“Do you mind if we have a word in my office?”
“Of course.”
When they’d shut the door and seated themselves, Tina spoke up. “It’s been a long time, eh, Cap?” she said.
“It has,” Morrison said. “How has it been going over there for you? I haven’t had a chance to check in on the Gangs squad recently.”
“I can’t complain—the lieutenant there takes good care of us. Still, when I heard you’d reached out for me, I couldn’t have been happier.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” Morrison said. He’d hoped as much. “So where are you living these days?”
“I got a nice place up in the north Bronx.”
“The Bronx! Weren’t you in Queens before?”
“Yeah, I moved up there because of a woman I was seeing. A really good one, for a change. She works at the Northern Westchester Medical Center in Mount Kisco, in the E.R. there. She used to work at Bellevue—I met her there when I was admitted.”
“So you moved up there to be closer to her?”
“Yeah.” A dark look came over Tina’s face. “It didn’t work out, though—we were doing pretty well for a while and she took really good care of me, but you know me, I can’t keep relationships.”
“I’m sorry to hear it,” Morrison said, knowing the feeling well.
“It’s all right, shit happens.”
“That it does.” Morrison nodded. “Well, look, let’s talk frankly here. First off, I want you to know that I’m looking out for you, and I want to make sure this goes all right for you. This is a seriously demented caseload so far, and I don’t want what happened to you at the Port Authority to hurt you here.”
“That’s really good of you, Cap. But believe me, nothing can hurt me anymore.”
“I get that,” Morrison pursued, “I just want to know if you’d be all right with talking to me about that. I only heard the basics at the time; and you and I didn’t really talk about it. Primarily I need to know that these cases aren’t going to push you over the edge, or take you anywhere bad, but if you can talk about it, I’d appreciate that. You and I go way back, and you’ve been there for me in some dark times in my life. I want to be there for you too.”
Koreski took a breath. “I really appreciate it, Cap. I’ve heard these cases are worst than most on the repulsive scale, but I’m sure I’ll be okay. I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anyone; but I’ve carved out a little life for myself since then, and I’m better now—a lot better. As for talking to you about it, I’ve always known I could talk to you. I don’t think I’ve ever had anyone treat me better than you have, and I certainly don’t have any issue with telling you about it now. Maybe it’d even help me for you to hear it all.”
“All right.” Morrison gestured toward his cabinet. “Can I get you a drink?”
Tina laughed. “No, thanks. It’s too early.”
“Oh, it’s never too early, kid. Remember, we have no clock around here. That’s why you can get out of the job in twenty—though I hear now it’s twenty-two.”
“Yeah,” Tina said. “I don’t mind it, though; I’m really in no rush to retire. You know I had a good life after my incident. I think I’m just not that good at being happy. This girl, Cap—she was really beautiful.” She smiled. “You remember when I first worked for you, and I told you I had a housemate? I think you said, What’s that?”
“I remember,” Morrison smiled.
“You were the first person on the PD that I told, and you made me feel very comfortable about it. I’ll never forget that. But yeah, these days I’m thinking I’m meant to be alone. I had, and have, a need for life on the edge. Adrenaline’s definitely my drug of choice, and it’s the worst. Nothing is lonelier than being with someone when they aren’t with you, and I don’t wish that on anyone with me. But I’ll bet you know about that too.” She looked down at her hands. “You know, I never thought you would come back after—after your son.”
“I never did.” Morrison stood up, opened the cabinet, and poured a healthy two fingers of Jameson. “Here, come on. It’s never too early.”
“I appreciate it, Cap, but no.”
“All right, then. I can’t let it go to waste, though.” He took a sip and sat back down. “Go ahead, Tina—whatever you can tell me.”
Koreski sat back with a sigh. “So, as you know, I was assigned to the Pimp Squad when I got off probation, right after I left patrol. It seemed like I’d be a perfect fit there, at least for the short term; they wanted to grab this pimp that owned midtown Manhattan, and figured I’d be the right girl for the job.
“Well, the first time out is my only time out. I’ve got Sergeant Veda—holy roller on the surface, always talking about God. Turns out he was a really disturbed guy, a complete phony. Anyway, we have three two-man teams working the job. I’ve got a kel on, and it’s tested before we go out—I’m reading five-by-five going out the door, and you can clearly hear me. So the setup is, I’m supposed to get on a Greyhound bus on 11th Avenue, pull into the Port Authority, and sit down in the terminal like I’m lost. It’s like fishing for flounder in Quincy, Mass—or in a fish tank, for that matter.
“So I get there, and everyone’s h
itting on me. Soon their guy comes in, big guy named Ernest the Pimp. I’m basically his specialty: runaways who hit the big city and get scared. Word was, he had a whole fleet of kids working for him, all from similar circumstances. Guess they didn’t call 8th Avenue the Minnesota Strip for nothing.
“Anyway, Ernest the scumbag shows up and asks me if I want some pizza. I say yes, and we head over to Sbarro. He said he was an outreach worker, in charge of getting help to girls in the area, and asked if he could help me get home. He explained some of the dangers of being out in the big city on my own, just enough to scare a girl who was actually stuck there. He had the perfect line of bullshit; it was perfect. So I got him right where I want him—my kel’s working and my backup teams are all good guys looking out for me. I feed Ernest the typical runaway story—tell him I don’t want to go home, I got an abusive dad, all that stuff. He acts real sympathetic, and offers to take me to the Welcoming Center, whatever that was supposed to be. He said he’d helped a lot of other girls like me. He even asked if I had ID on me. I told him I didn’t—I’d said I was fifteen already—and he said that wasn’t a problem, and that the folks at the Welcoming Center could help me get an ID.
“So he tells me we have to leave the terminal, and I’m thinking I’m good: I can see one of my backup teams out of the corner of my eye, and I’m real close to nailing this asshole. All I need is an offer of a sex act, or confer to offer as they say, and he’s mine. He has his friend pull this big-ass black Lincoln into the roadway at the terminal, and I’m looking around for the backup cars, and don’t you fucking know it, as I’m being hustled into this car I see Sergeant Veda in one of the cars, yelling at the guys in there, and none of them are paying attention to what’s going on with me.”
“Wait, what?” Morrison stopped her. “What the hell could he have been yelling at them for, and why would he choose that moment to do it?”
Tina smiled grimly. “I found out later that it was because he’d found a Hustler in one of the cars. He was yelling at them for looking at a goddamn porno.”
“Jesus,” Morrison said, closing his eyes.
“So I try to back out, but Ernest shoves me into the car,” Tina went on. “Now I know I’m in trouble. The team didn’t see me get shoved in, and we’re moving. I’m hoping the other teams spot me, and they did, but none of them moved. That was another thing—I found out later that Veda told them to hold their positions. That pervert phony born-again motherfucker told them to sit tight, so he could yell at them some more, and now no one has my back.
“The Lincoln pulls out, and no one follows us. My kel wasn’t working at that point either, but I didn’t know that; I’m just thinking, No way is this fucking happening to me, right? They got me in the front seat, and this sick fuck Ernest, he doesn’t waste any time. He tells me all about how he’s going to make me his fuck toy, then turn me out onto the street. So I’m like, Okay, we got the statement we need, where the fuck are you guys? But nobody comes to stop the car, and nobody’s behind us—no plainclothes car, no radio car, nothing. They lost me. Ernest starts playing with me while he’s driving, and I tell him to stop. I don’t have a gun on me, or a tin—I’m just supposed to have three backup teams and a Sergeant, and I don’t. I try to get out, and the guy in back grabs me by the hair. Nice red hair, pretty girl, he says.
“At this point I realize I’m completely fucked. Next stop is the Martinique hotel on 32nd—classic hideout spot, total dump. No one gives a shit what happens there, and you can’t see any police on the block. There’s a park across the street and Sanitation’s picking up the garbage, so I scream when they drag me out of the car. The Sanitation guys are kicking the cans so the rats don’t jump out at them, and they look right at me, with me yelling for them to call the cops. No response.
“The three guys drag me upstairs and rip my clothes off, then Ernest rapes me. The other fuck—I don’t even remember his name—he sticks his dick in my mouth. At this point I pretty much wanted to die. I started to pray, wondering what the fuck I was doing there, and why I’d trusted that moralizing piece of shit Veda. After the first two are done with me there’s a third guy, and I can’t even go into what that sick fuck did. They duct tape my mouth and cuff me to the bed, and I wanted to die. Sometimes I still do.”
“Tina,” Morrison said softly. “Are you sure you’re okay with telling me all this?”
Tina shrugged. “Yeah, of course. I always talked to you. Besides, I’ve started; I’m not stopping now. It gets worse, if that’s possible.” She thought for a second. “You know, I think I will take that drink.”
Morrison got up and poured one for her without a word. After a long sip, Koreski went on.
“Well, anyway, they smack me around a bit, but not bad enough in the face to damage the property, if you know what I mean. That first night I’m still praying they find me, because Ernest has already decided that this fat disgusting white guy from Scarsdale will be my first customer. Like, who would believe some money guy out of Scarsdale would even know where this fleabag hotel was, much less come to it for this?—but the guy is a freak, and he pays for the whole night. I’m still tied up when he comes in, and he does things I still don’t want to talk about.
“So I’m still waiting for the troops to show up, but I’m a prisoner, and I’m really starting to lose hope. This terrible, low feeling had come over me—it was indescribable. I have to say, I truly value my freedom every day now. And I guess they had two hundred cops kicking in doors for me all over the city, and the pressure out on the street was severe. All the drug dealers, prostitutes, and pimps on the street were getting rousted. I was told later on, you couldn’t sell a hotdog on the corner, much less crack. I can never thank Inspector Harrington enough for what he did—everything was shut down.
“At some point—fatso from Scarsdale’s still having his fun with me—I hear Ernest and these mopes talking outside the room. They’re getting nervous, because word’s come up from the street that I’m a cop. I figure I’m dead at this point—any minute they’ll come in and kill me—but they don’t, and soon they’re gone. At 0500 the door comes crashing in, and Cap, I was never so happy to see the boys from Emergency in all my life. I just cried and cried.
“I went to Bellevue for treatment, and that’s where I met Angela. Now the whole job knows my story, or at least they think they know, and everywhere I went after that they just look at me weird. At least it felt like everyone did. I was embarrassed and depressed and there wasn’t enough medication for me to take—Lexapro, Prozac, every fucking drug, till I didn’t even know who I was and I couldn’t drink enough. Angela helped pull me out of it. I owe her my life and my career, really; without her support I’d probably be dead. And still it didn’t work out.
“Anyway, if that’s what it takes to make Detective as quickly as I did, I’d say it definitely was not worth it. I’m just glad I didn’t end up with HIV. I went to therapy for a long, long time, believe me.”
“I believe it,” Morrison said. “What happened to Ernest what’s-his-name?”
“Good old Ernest Stanley Jackson. He fled off to Baltimore; they picked him up within a few days. They got his friends, too, in another fleabag hotel in Manhattan. Thought they were hiding out, the morons—they just went from the west side to the east side. On their way back from picking up Ernest in Baltimore, I heard they beat the shit out of him at every rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike.”
“They put him away for a good while?”
“He got twenty-five to life under the state RICO statute. All his buddies got the same.”
“That’s good.”
“Yeah, small victories. The fat guy from Scarsdale was the guy I really wanted. He was the most disgusting animal, this motherfucker. Sweaty, fat, big rolls, real small dick. God, did I hate him—he was a rich fuck, and just, I don’t know. He paid for me. I learned a lot about humanity and inhumanity that night, not that I really needed that type of lesson.”
“So did they get him?�
�
“Oh, yeah. That was more vindicating than any of the rest of it. Sergeant Devallo took good care of that one too—when he was putting him in the wagon for arraignment, he made sure to tell everyone else in the back that hey, this guy raped a young black kid. Now that’s the way to get someone paid back.”
Morrison laughed through a grimace. “It sure is. And Sergeant Veda—I’m assuming you heard what happened to him, right?”
“I heard he hung himself. I was sorry for his family, but it was hard to feel sorry for him.”
“Why would you want to?”
“Well, you know…it was a lot easier to be mad at him when he didn’t show any moral compass, but suicide? I couldn’t believe he felt that bad about what happened to me.”
“Wait, stop right there,” Morrison said, holding up his hand. “What do you mean, felt that bad?”
“About screwing up with me. I assume he killed himself behind what happened to me.”
Morrison laughed and shook his head. “Oh, no—no no, Tina, don’t even think about it like that. He really did do the wrong thing by you, and his suicide had nothing to do with it. Didn’t anybody brief you on what happened to him?”
“No,” Tina said, her eyes wide. “I just heard his family found him hanging in his bedroom after he killed himself. Was there more to the story?”
“Oh, yes,” Morrison said. “Even though it was a suicide, they investigated it as an untimely death, and they turned up a lot.”
“Well then! Do cut me in on it, Cap.”
“It is my turn, I guess! And then we can get down to business.”
“Deal,” she smiled.
“Okay.” He took a swallow of whiskey. “After your incident he got suspended with pay, you know, out on administrative leave—tie goes to the runner, innocent until proven guilty, and all that. So one day he’s out at Kennedy Airport, waiting for an Aeroflot arrival; he’d apparently paid for one of those Russian mail-order brides online.”
“You’re shitting me. And him already married?”
“Yep. He’d told the Russians he was going to leave his wife for her. But the girl never shows up. Instead, two guys meet him at their prearranged spot in Long Term Parking, and explain to him that they need fifteen thousand dollars up front, so their company doesn’t lose out. He explains that he already has an apartment set up for the girl in Bayside, but the guys don’t bite; they tell him they have to protect her. In the end, he pays the fifteen grand and they tell him they’ll meet him the next day in Bayside.